Italy overturns 'absurd' drug law equating marijuana and hard drugs

Italy’s constitutional court has overturned a controversial law equating cannabis with cocaine and heroin. The decision could see around 10,000 people released from the country’s overburdened jails.

The court ruled the law was “illegitimate,” without
elaborating further.

The law, passed by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in
2006, has been blamed for Italy’s swelling prison population, as
sentences for selling, growing or possessing marijuana
effectively tripled.

Official data shows that Italian prisons are operating beyond
capacity, with 62,000 inmates residing in facilities meant to
house a maximum of 48,000.

The prisoners’ rights group Antigone claims that 40 percent of
all inmates are currently serving sentences for drug crimes.
Following Friday’s verdict, the previous drug law and its far
more lenient sentencing regime automatically takes effect.

Opinions on the issue clearly cut down party lines in the
country’s centrist coalition government.

Senator Carlo Giovanardi, one of the architects of the tough law,
said the ruling was a "devastating choice from a scientific
viewpoint and in the message it sends to young people that some
drugs are less dangerous than others," Reuters reports.

But Alessia Morani, an MP with the centrist Democratic Party
(PD), said “the ruling puts the final word on one of the most
absurd laws that parliament has ever passed in recent
years," Ansa news agency cites him as saying.

In January 20133, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that
Italy's overcrowded prisons violate the basic rights of inmates,
fined the government 100,000 euro ($131,000) and ordered it to
institute changes within a year’s time.

Meanwhile, while the legalization push is gaining momentum in the
US on a state level, marijuana remains listed in the federal
Controlled Substances Act at Schedule I, meaning there is no
currently accepted medical use and “a high potential for
abuse.”

According to the US Drug Enforcement Agency, “Schedule I drugs
are the most dangerous drugs of all the drug schedules with
potentially severe psychological or physical dependence.”

While heroin is also classified as a Schedule I drug, Cocaine,
methamphetamine and OxyContin are listed as Schedule II, meaning
they officially have “less abuse potential” than cannabis.

In an open letter published Wednesday, 18 members of Congress
called on President Barack Obama to reclassify marijuana.